Warwickshire, a poem

                                                                                        
Rolling, rolling, ever rolling,
Clouds of thunder and dark.
Shining, shining, ever shining,
Sunlight, songs of the lark.

Deep and roving, those wandering hills,
That lie softly in the mellow folds,
Of golden grasses that wave,
Warm and glowing in the dusky gold.

The sun's own funeral,
Orange red pyre,
Drawn deep into the sleeping trees,
Leaves burnished with fire.

Lost in the warm summer eves,
Bones old and tired,
Clouds drawaing in the blanket of night,
Upon the gentle, honest shires.

Sample of the short story ‘The Railway Bridge’ by S.J. Menary.

This story is currently in the process of publication with Anubis Literary Agency as part of a literary anthology.

‘Mother always told me not to go out after dark.

Dark black streets, wet with cold hard rain, infecting the senses like a contagion. The full moon is out tonight. It’s hidden behind brown polluted clouds and illuminates from behind like bad stage lighting.

I hate full moon. All the weirdoes come out on full moon. Lurking under the railway bridge, down the lonely road, in the shadows of the train station. Desperate for blood.

I watch as the yellow windows blur past as the train rattles across the bridge. The noise fades away, and I hear the thin sound of lonely footsteps.

He’s walking fast. Young, 18 maybe. Just a kid. Rich Grandma paying for everything. Those extra strength glasses, pristine textbooks, brand new red hoodie. A kid like that is gonna be a doctor. Make the family proud. That is, if he can stay away from the wrong side of the railway bridge.

It’s raining. Just a bit. But Glasses pulls up his hood, checks his watch. He’s late. Probably has to get home to Grandma. Oversized town house, meticulous décor, shiny new car in the driveway.

Good little Glasses. He stops at the crossing, tapping his feet. He’s really late then.

The quickest way home is through that dark, deserted underground car park. A concrete forest of broken stairwells and abandoned shopping trolleys.

I watch him thinking weighing it up in his head. The cogs are whirring. It’s a faster route, but you just never know what’s hidden down there.

He takes that fateful step, and the shadows swallow him whole. All I can hear is the crunch of shattered glass under his expensive shoes.

Mother always said if I did go out after dark, always stay under the streetlights. Bad things happen in the dark.’

Observations on editing

My novel is almost done, and once I have written the last sentence, thrown my hands up in relief/joy/pure exactly that the thing is FINALLY finished, it occurs to me that the job of the novelist is far from done.

Oh no! I hear you cry. How can this be? You have an idea, you put pen to paper, a few years down the line (or more than a few if you are me) you have a book. Happy days!

Not so, I'm afraid. The finished book is rarely the finished product, by a long stretch. There are many editing processes to get through first.

1) Go back to the start and read the book from cover to cover. I guarantee that you will be mortified by the early chapters, as you will have progressed as a writer as you go along.

2) Initial edit. This is the basic grammar and smelling mistakes that need correcting first and foremost.

3) Plot inconsistences. You may well be surprised that you have missed bits out, forgotten characters entirely and assumed that the reader had mind reading powers. Because obviously they know that Johnny is Trevor's father, without you having to tell them.

4) The reader's perspective. Surprisingly, I have found that I for one forget I am writing for an audience. And the phrases I use may not be proper grammar, like. Because everyone else wasn't brung up proper, obviously. That'll learn yer. The best way to tackle this is to either join a great little writer's group and get people to read you work and point out all your mistakes. If you can handle it.
Alternatively, you could go for the gentler option. Ask a pool of your friends, with an interest in your subject matter, to do a proof read for you. Give them hard copies and ask then to scribble all over them with things they like/dislike or notice about your work.

Now, and only now, are you ready for the real work. Because contrary to popular belief, the shadowy world of publishing does not take your magical amazing book and make it into a hardback best seller. They will hack and burn and edit their way through it until it isn't even really your book anymore.

Someone once told me that the best way to survive this process is to write that perfect, magical, amazing book. Hide it in a drawer. Yours, and only yours, forever. Then take a second copy, and send it to the publishers. Let them tear it apart, put it back together again, and if you’re lucky, publish it. Two books. Yours and theirs.

I always thought that was good advice.

Missing chapters

I have been writing my first novel over a period of years (12 to be exact). And, as many writers find, it is hard to fit your literary ambitions around your day job. I have found that I have had to snatch whatever time I can to write, especially when inspiration strikes.

Therefore, it was inevitable that parts of my novel would end up on the back of train receipts and Greggs packets. 

So, when I finally drew close to the end, I had promised myself that I would go back and make sure I had all of my chapters in one place, ready for the first edit.  The prospect that each chapter would be neatly rounded up, in order, without any inconsistences, dwindled fast.

I found myself amazed at myself. How could I have written such brilliant paragraphs side by side with such utter crap?! I had thought myself a better writer than that! Where did that plot line come from? And who was that character? Didn't I cut him in chapter 12? Hang on, where is chapter 12?! And chapter 2 come to think of it?

Apparently, I found that, in between tearing chunks of my hair from my scalp, I had managed to miss out chapter 2 entirely, chapter 12 was written on the back of a metro from last year, and chapters 16 through 18 were handwritten in a scrap book I took on retreat with me.

Suddenly, that first edit seems a very long way off...

Procrastination...

I seem to be adept in this aspect of novel writing, finding every opportunity to do so. I'm fairly sure that if there were a qualification in it, I would hold a PhD in procrastination.

So, with that in mind, I found myself one night thinking about baking. And what I could make if I put my imagination to good use away from the page. The following day, I attacked my new project with gusto. The result was a rather marvellous salted caramel pie.

I have been asked to circulate the recipe, so for the benefit of procrastinators everywhere, indulge!

Ingredients:

Bourbon biscuits

Butter (for melting and greasing)

Condensed milk caramel in a tin

About 100g of dark chocolate

Salt, to taste

Double cream

Method:

This recipe can be manipulated to suit the size of tin or pie dish you are using.

Smash up the biscuits to make the base, and add a little melted butter to make it firm (about a desert spoonful with probably do it).

Put into the fridge to set for half an hour.

Whist that is cooling, put a tablespoon of caramel into a disk and add enough salt to it to suit your taste buds. A quarter of a teaspoon should be enough. Stir until smooth.

Pour the cream into a bowl, setting aside a tablespoon in a separate cup. Whip up the majority of the cream, and make sure it is very stiff. Then, fold in the salted caramel mixture. You're going for swirls of caramel rather than fully mixed together. Put back into the fridge to cool down again.

In a saucepan, pour some boiling water in and set a heat-proofed dish on the top. Add the chocolate in and let it melt over a low heat. When melted, add the cream from the cup and stir well until glossy. Then add in two to three tablespoons of caramel (depending on the size of your pie dish) and mix well. Add more salt (again, a quarter of a teaspoon should do it unless you really like salt).

Pour it over the biscuit base, and leave in the fridge for an hour, or until firm. Once it has solidified a little, spoon the cream over the top, and eat.

The enemy

Ok, so I sat down to write the other night. Great, I thought, nice and quiet. Put my music on, great playlist of songs which should induce an inspirational haze of motivation.

And then the doorbell goes.

It seems there are never enough hours in the day to write. It's a time consuming hobby that is punctuated by long, deathly periods of procrastination. Answering the door and finding a hundred reasons to keep my houseguest imprisoned in my living room with a cup of tea is only one method to avoid the keyboard.

There is nothing worse that writer's block.  Nothing better than getting into your groove and letting the characters flow onto the page.

But, without question, I was blocked. Staring at the computer screen till your eyeballs liquefy, nose flattened against the plasma glow, fingernails scraping the underside of the table.

Hours. I can spend hours in this position. Glumly coercing my reluctant brain into a spectacular burst of brilliance.

But, like a rare creature in sub-Saharan Africa, plots elude me. Need chocolate. Need caffeine. Buzzing off the walls!  Too distracted to write, to think, need to bounce around like a crazy thing!  Ha ha!

Slump.

Check this great novel series out by Marilyn Rodwell:

http://www.outofthecocoa.blogspot.co.uk/

It's an engaging story set in Trinidad, with beautiful imagry and a fantastic narritive.

Tip of the day:

When starting out, it's really useful to get together with other writers. To talk, understand about the processes people use, hear other people's experiences, and even share work if you're brave enough!

Here is a good list of groups near you:

http://www.writingwestmidlands.org/west-midlands/writing-groups/

It's good to contact someone in advance to make sure it's the right kind of group for you; if you are a beginner, or are looking for something more advanced.

Having lost my last group, I was thrilled to find a new one on my doorstep in Rugby.  The group is friendly and meets in a pub (always an advantage!), and they are mostly poets. This unnerved me to start with, being naturally a fiction writer as opposed to a poet.

To me, poetry was something that skilful and soulful people did, like writing songs. As I am not terribly musical (a polite way for saying I'm about as musical as a bulldozer), I didn't hold out a lot of hope.

However, I have to say I am impressed! Going into a class full of people you don't know is quite daunting, but if you have an open mind, it's surprising what you can find out about yourself (but don't worry, I still won't be singing any time soon).

I will be posting some of my new poems on to the site soon. Watch this space!

Welcome to my blog

Hello, and welcome to my first blog.

I'm a new and aspiring author, and I am hoping to publish my first novel soon. This blog is my diary of how I'm going to get there, and hoepfully, it might help other new writers out there learn about the pitfalls of publication and the terrors that go along with the process.

I am in the final stages of my first draft, and very soon, I'll be announcing that it's finished (I hope!). Then the real hard work begins...